Soggy Saturday, snowy Sunday?

Today was chilly and rainy, but tomorrow is threatening to be showers-mixed-with-snow. There is only a 30% chance, but that lasts all day long. Ick!

Today John went over to the railroad to fiddle around before attending the board meeting. Tom and I braved the messy weather and took off for Madison. We did a little shopping (looking) and then decided that the Christmas shopping frenzy must have hit Wisconsin already. The mall parking lots were bejammed and bejumbled, so we skipped that and went to have Indian food down near the Capitol. Along the way we discovered that the Badgers were playing a home game and the sidewalks were filled with folks wearing red sweatshirts, hoodies and raingear. It was not yet one o'clock, and it looked like the crowd was already leaving the stadium.

Tom asked, "Where are they going? The stadium is back that way."

I said the weather was either too crummy for them to stay or else one team or the other was doing so well there was no point in hanging around. Turns out the Badgers were trouncing Indiana -- 83 to 20. It was the most points a Big Ten team had put together in a single game since 1950. No wonder people just went home and got out of the rain.

Anyway, we had a nice lunch at Maharani. I love Indian food and we can't get it in the Dells area. We stumbled onto Maharani quite by accident some months back, only to discover it is consistently ranked as one of the best places in Madison for Indian cuisine. They have a very reasonably priced lunch buffet. For me, a buffet is best, because I can never remember exactly what I liked last time. This way I get a chance to recognize things that look familiar and try a small bit of new items from the ever-changing offerings. Great! Tom's one complaint would be that the servers sometimes neglect to bring a basket of naan, a wonderful thin bread. Today looked like we were not going to get any again, but soon a basket arrived with several pieces still quite warm from the oven.

Afterward we walked a a half dozen blocks to visit the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. It is not large, but the exhibits are informative and well designed. They took us from the Civil War through the Persian Gulf. A bit somber, but appropriate for two days after Veterans Day.

We then stopped into the museum shop at the Wisconsin Historical Museum. We had already seen the exhibits there, so we just wandered around the shop a bit. They had the new book about H.H. Bennett, the famouse photographer whose work put the Dells on the tourist map back in the 19th century. This volume, H.H. Bennet, Photographer: His American Landscape, is dedicated to our friend, Debbie Kinder (one of Bennett's descendants) and the Stewards of the Dells of the Wisconsin River, a group that Tom and I both belong to and for whom he donates his time and talent in a number of ways. On our way back to the car we ran into more Badger fans trudging home.

Then we headed back home the long way ourselves, under gloomy skies and occasional spurts of drizzle. Tom is over at Peg and Rich's taking care of Miss Molly (and probably dozing in front of the television.) Peter has been watching some UFC program on the 100 best fights all night. I read a little and am ready to hit the hay. But it is only 8:00 PM!

At least I am in the house, warm and dry. It is not even drizzling at the moment, but it is 37 (2.77 C) outside. Maybe I'll push a snoring Sundance over and crawl under the covers anyway.